All in all, when it comes down to it, one is not just interested in the effectiveness of the functioning of an economy in terms of what it does produce,
not just raw numbers. One must remember that industrial capacity in this game is a gross oversimplification designed to symbolize numerous factors, not represent actual raw production,
if it were it would be necessary to give the USA 1200 IC base. We do not because the USA never maxed out its economy to fight the war.
The reality of the Soviet economy of the pre-war years, is that the purge of officer of the Red Army, was merely the tip of the iceberg called "the great purge", and that the summary deportation of large populations of people considered hostile to the Soviet regime, combined with the liquidation of much of the most talented and committed members of the Communist Partyleadership, not to mention technicians, bureaucrats and other "professionals," combined to shatter what was left of a more or less already broken economy, and that it was only toward the years 1938-39, that any real normalcy was returned to the administration of the country.
Lets remember that Tukhachevsky was purged for "wrecking," and that this charge was brought chiefly by Buddeny and Voroshilov who argued that his concepts of mechanized war were an overt attempt to subvert the Red Army, because of course they believed that cavalry was a superior means of prosecuting mobile war,
since horses don't used oil and can forage for supply. So, I ask you, how do you represent the fact that some of the USSR' awesome steel production was being diverted from the production of tanks and into the production of horse shoes and stirrups for Buddeny's beloved "Red" Cavalry?
This is just one example of the waste, and narrow minded thinking that hobbled the Soviet Unions industrial potentia. There are others. Suffice to say there was a lot of waste, and over-production of obsolete equipment as well as just bad management by a bureaucracy that lived in fear of new ideas, or any kind of initiative that might result in sudden deportation to Siberia.
What your figures,
dating from 1940, show is the
potential of the Soviet Economy that I agree was very large indeed. What they do no reflect is the slow recuperation of the Soviet Economy from the Great Purge and its impact on an economy that was only just recovering from revolution and civil war of the 1920's. Therefore, a peacetime_IC_mod, is completely justifiable as a tool to represent these factors which undermined the effectiveness of that economy prior to the war.
Your production figures mention gross steel production. Intersting, because I have looked at surveys of the Soviet Steel industry and even modern assessments of the real value of the Soviet Union's steel production showed continued inefficiency in the system:
"Measured in gross output, the Soviet Union produces more than 20 percent of the world's steel. Yet Soviet firms, especially in the machine building branch of the economy, ritually bemoan the desperate shortage of steel. Can the world's leading steel producer simultaneously be suffocating its steel-consuming indutries?"
Steeltown, USSR
Stephen Kotkin, 1991
In fact, I have not reduced IC. I have done exactly the opposite. I have increased it, but handicapped it to represent the generally bad administration of that economy.
The word is "simulation," and the vanilla model does not in any way "simulate" the fact that the Soviet Union could not produce and army capable of holding the German army at the Dvina --Dnepr line, which is completely possible for even a novice USSR player in MP, should he choose to do so, in 1941, despite the impressive production statistics advertised by the regieme. In fact, the Soviet army was not just embarrassed in 1941 in a relatively equal contest with Germany but was even more severly embarassed in the Winter War a year before against Finland.
That said, this is an interesting topic of discussion but it would be cool if we could continue it in the mod thread, as this is the game thread: East Is Red 1.06
